Faith, Hope, and Love in Action on behalf of women, children and youth around the world

In raising awareness for Human Trafficking, we have focused on ways to end this horrible practice, but what if we could stop girls from being abducted in the first place. Is there something we could do to arm them with knowledge that would make them safe? And how do we reach out to them? FUMC United Methodist Women asked these questions.

Summertime is concert time and did you know that concerts are high on the list as places for possible abductions to occur, especially concerts that attract young girls? Yes, it’s true.

Often parents will send their kids to these concerts unaccompanied. Figuring their kids are safe in the venue, they drop them off at the start of the show and pick them up when the show is over. Traffickers will buy a ticket to the event and then lure these unaccompanied girls to a remote area of the venue with the promise of meeting the artist or being taken backstage, by claiming they are with the band.

So what part can we play in stopping this? Actually, FUMC UMW played a very big part. Have you heardof One Direction? They are the biggest boy band on the planet right now and they are currently on a world tour that will include many of the cities that are high risk areas for human trafficking. By using the No.1 choice for communication among teens….Twitter….we contacted three of the largest One Direction fan Twitter accounts and asked that they post a warning about the dangers of human trafficking. All three complied and as a result, our warning message was seen by over 519,000 girls all over the world! The next day, one of the boys in the band tweeted a reminder to the fans to be safe and be mindful of security at all times, and his message was seen by over 20 million fans throughout the world.